To Burn Always With This Hard, Gemlike

Great Passions May Give Us A Quickened Sense Of Life, Ecstasy And Sorrow Of Love, The Various Forms Of Enthusiastic Activity, Disinterested Or Otherwise, Which Comes Naturally To Many Of Us.

To Burn Always With This Hard, Gemlike Flame, To Maintain This Ecstasy, Is Success In Life. ... While All Melts Under Our Feet, We May Well Grasp At Any Exquisite Passion, Or Any Contribution To Knowledge That Seems By A Lifted Horizon To Set The Spirit Free For A Moment, Or Any Stirring Of The Senses, Strange Dyes, Strange Colours, And Curious Odours, Or Work Of The Artist's Hands, Or The Face Of One's Friend.

Not To Discriminate Every Moment Some Passionate Attitude In Those About Us, And In The Very Brilliancy Of Their Gifts Some Tragic Dividing Of Forces On Their Ways, Is, On This Short Day Of Frost And Sun, To Sleep Before Evening. With This Sense Of The Splendour Of Our Experience And Of Its Awful Brevity, Gathering All We Are Into One Desperate Effort To See And Touch, We Shall Hardly Have Time To Make Theories About The Things We See And Touch.

But When Reflexion Begins To Play Upon These Objects... Like Some Trick Of Magic Each Object Is Loosed Into A Group Of Impressions - Colour, Odour, Texture... And If We Continue To Dwell In Thought On This World... The Whole Scope Of Observation Is Dwarfed Into The Narrow Chamber Of The Individual Mind.

Every Moment Some Form Grows Perfect In Hand Or Face; Some Tone On The Hills Or The Sea Is Choicer Than The Rest; Some Mood Of Passion Or Insight Or Intellectual Excitement Is Irresistibly Real And Attractive For Us - For That Moment Only.